https://sputnikglobe.com/20230309/zulu-star-michael-caine-slams-bullsht-claim-film-inspires-white-supremacists-1108224930.html

'Zulu' Star Michael Caine Slams 'Bullsh*t' Claim Film Inspires White Supremacists

'Zulu' Star Michael Caine Slams 'Bullsh*t' Claim Film Inspires White Supremacists

Sputnik International

'Zulu', featuring Michael Caine's first starring role as real-life Lieutenant Gonville Bromhead, has long been a staple of Sunday afternoon TV in the UK. The film criticises war and imperialism while lionising the Zulu warriors.

2023-03-09T17:10+0000

2023-03-09T17:10+0000

2023-05-28T15:26+0000

world

zulu

michael caine

cy endfield

stanley baker

mangosuthu buthelezi

south africa

war

british empire

prevent strategy

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Veteran British actor Michael Caine has hit out at claims that his first hit film Zulu inspired "white supremacists."The classic 1964 war film, which portrays the 1879 battle of Rorke's Drift and made Caine an international star, was branded "key text" for "white nationalists/supremacists" in a review of the government's counter-radicalisation programme Prevent.The actor, who is still working despite being about to turn 90 this month, said Zulu was the film that "made me a star," later adding that "there are no films I wish I hadn't made."Zulu was filmed on location in South Africa, some 60 miles from the historical Rorke's Drift battle site, in 1963 — two years before the Writers' Guild of Great Britain called for a cultural embargo on the country over its Apartheid sytem which separated people by race.The film starred several well-known British actors, including Jack Hawkins, along with a brief appearance by Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi — a former member of the African National Congress, banned by the regime in 1960, and later founder of the Inkatha Freedom Party — as his great-grandfather King Cetshwayo.The film portrays the Zulu kingdom and its soldiers as noble, brave and tactically astute, as articulated by several main characters in the story. One soldier questions why he is fighting a war 6,000 miles from home, while a Boer scout expresses distrust for the British Empire's motives. It ends with Caine, playing real-life second-in-command Lieutenant Gonville Bromhead, expressing his horror at the carnage of war.Cy Endfield, the film's director, was a US citizen who moved to the UK after he was accused of being a communist and blacklisted from working in Hollywood by the McCarthyite House Un-American Activities Commission (HUAC).Among Endfield's many British films is 1957's noir thriller Hell Drivers starring Stanley Baker — who later led the cast of Zulu as Lieutenant John Chard, who commanded the defence of Rorke's Drift. The film's villain is the greedy boss of a trucking firm, while Baker plays the working-class ex-convict who brings him down.

https://sputnikglobe.com/20220918/zulu-king-participates-in-traditional-reed-dance-festival-despite-threats-from-his-brother-1100919849.html

south africa

united kingdom (uk)

2023

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uk, michael caine, zulu, south africa, rorke's drift, white supremacism